Juniper 10
Juniperus chinensis ‘Shimpaku’

FEBRUARY 4, 2024. I took this one to the workshop with Jim Doyle yesterday and worked on it quite a bit after he and I talked through the tree’s design. In short we did more of what I had thought I should do than I was willing to do on my own. One branch was removed, the left branch was guy-wired down to lower that side quite a bit, and the top was thinned out quite a bit. Part of the thinning was accomplished by wiring down a branch from the back to fill in the gap made by removing the weak branch. I also took out a couple of smaller twiglets crowding the crown; that helped too. Along with that I wired some other branches to improve the silhouette, and I started the annual clean up to encourage new foliage. I have a “before” photo below, but I’ll wait till new growth has started to post the “after” image.

One problem that showed up here and in the other juniper I had there was spider mites. The white-paper test didn’t show anything moving around, but rubbing the dots left reddish smears. Spraying all my junipers and pines starts this week! They’re all on the same bench, and now I know what causes that weak sickly light puke colored foliage. Spraying every two weeks starts now!

February 11, 2023

FEBRUARY 13, 2023. This one went to the workshop with Jennifer Price day before yesterday. That was one of the best sessions like that I’ve ever been to. She’s direct, brooks no foolishness, and knows what to do with junipers. So I did it. “Repot this one now. Don’t do another thing to it (except may wire some branches) this year, wait until all the new shoots extend like crazy. Then see about some pruning next year.” In repotting it, she suggested a different pot, John Walker went to get some from his shop, and lo and behold it looks much better now without having anything done to the foliage, I love it. John helped me with the repot and charged me only $50.00 for the pot and the help.

October 31, 2022

OCTOBER 31, 2022. This tree had a rough time in the late spring, and I’m glad I took it to Kathy to work on at the May show. Just like I found with the juniper from Mike Lee, I finally learned what I had been told before I must do in the beginning of the growing period each year. So now I will do it every year. I’m afraid I let it go a little over the mid and late summer, but it’s not so overgrown as it was this time in 2021. I’ll do the required spring clean up, strip all the wire off, snip off the unnecessary little twigs, clean up the apex even more, and repot it in the smaller container that the newest juniper is in at the moment. And of course I’ll clean up the bark and actually take care of the shari and jins. Won’t I have fun!?

MARCH 15, 2022. It’s about time I made a few notes on this tree. i just discovered that I hadn’t even added a photo I took last summer. The shape isn’t too different from what you see from October 2020, which was taken just after our move to the new house. Actually — a week or so before we moved the household. I added one from last July (2021) to the gallery, but it’s not significantly different from what I have from 2020. But this tree itself had a great year of growth in the new place, getting lots of beautiful sunlight when it wasn’t raining. At least there were no trees blocking the sun when it did have a chance to come out. I’ve got some clean-up wiring to do, and maybe I’ll get around to the shari I’ve talked about. Maybe. I’m a little hesitant to do too much.

I’ve decided that after ten or twelve years doing this, I’ve learned one big lesson: leave the trees alone once you’ve tinkered with them a little. They’ll grow and develop just fine if they get the basic needs met: sun and water. A little fertilizer and verbal encouragement helps, I’m sure. I’ll clean this one up and post a new photo soon. It looks so good!

October 29, 2020

October 30, 2020. Well, this one looks a little different now. Given what happened with the Covid restrictions I haven’t taken it anywhere. Not even to a local meeting. I spent a lot of time in the spring trimming the shoots back and wiring the smaller branches. I was trying to clean up the profile, still leave most of the trunk visible, and do a little toward defining different pads. I’ve gone back and forth with wanting to make the left side one big area on one hand, trying to make one of those helmet looking things, or just keeping the individual pads on the other. I’m afraid I’ve left it sort of in the middle, neither fish nor fowl. This photo is from the original front, and most of the time I think that looks good. Other days I think it looks better from the back. The problem there is it looks too flat if you see bare trunk in a line all the way to the top. Maybe when I finish making a clear shari all the way up it will look better. (Actually, looking at this photo, I had it looking neater back in July. needs attention again.)

October 17, 2019. I bought this one this morning from John Walker at his new house/business: Walking Tree. I wanted a nice juniper anyway and had looked at some at Evergreen Gardenworks with trunks about like this but ugly foliage. They were priced at $300 and up. John only wanted $100 so I saved money over the other price and got a better looking tree. I think now I want to take it to a workshop with Bjorn and get help with pads building and placement. If he’ll bother with something this basic looking. But I like it, and that’s what matters. I know that if it’s going to go in a show some day, I’ll have to lengthen the first branch–on the right–and probably bring in the ones on the left. But that can wait until I get advice from some other people. There’s one jin, and some wiglets growing from the trunk that I can probably clear out before that.

Photos